Monday, August 30, 2010

We are often taken aback by the level of fanaticism of Muslims. Millions of them riot, burn churches, and kill completely innocent people because a newspaper has published a few cartoons of Muhammad or because the Pope has quoted a medieval emperor saying that violence is not compatible with the nature of God.

People generally are biased towards a belief system that has this many followers. They believe that the sheer size of Islam qualifies it as a religion. But is Islam really a religion?

Some say all religions start as a cult until, with the passage of time, they gradually gain acceptance and the status of religion. However, there are certain characteristics that distinguish cults from religions. Dr. Janja Lalich and Dr. Michael D. Langone have created a list that describes cults fairly well.[1] The more a group or a doctrine has these characteristics the more it follows that it should be defined and labeled as a cult. The following is that list, which I have compared Islam to point by point.

1. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.

Muslims are extremely zealous about their faith and have an unquestioning commitment to their prophet, whose book, the Qur’an, for them is Truth and Law.

2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

Muslims are forbidden to question and doubt the basic tenets of their faith, and dissent is punishable by death.

3. Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).

Five times during the day Muslims stop whatever they are doing and stand for a repetitive and ritualistic prayer and chant the Qur’an. In addition, for one whole month in the year they must fast and abstain from drinking or eating, from dawn to dusk, a practice that can be particularly taxing in summertime.

4. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel, Ffor example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth.

Every detail of the life of a Muslim is prescribed. He is told what is forbidden (haram) and what is permitted (halal), what food to eat, how to dress, and what rituals to follow in order to pray. A Muslim is not allowed to date, and marriages are arranged. Corporal punishment, including torture for disobedience to the authorities, is enjoined, both for children and adults.

5. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members. Ffor example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity.

Muslims claim special status for their prophet, while they vilify all other religions. They can become extremely violent if their prophet is slighted. They regard themselves as superior to all others, and when in a non-Muslim country, they constantly lobby for concessions and preferential treatments like the special privilege of having a special room set aside in publicly funded schools so that Muslim students can pray there. They are frequently granted exceptions unavailable to members of other religions. Recently in Ontario , Canada , they tried to make Islamic law (Sharia) recognized and binding, so they could bypass Canadian law. They were defeated, thanks largely to the tireless opposition of ex-Muslims.

6. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.

Muslims have a very strong us-versus-them mentality. They call all non-Muslims, regardless of faith, kafir, an expressly derogatory term, which means one who blasphemes God. For them, the world is forever divided into Dar al Salam (House of Peace) and Dar al Harb (House of War). The non-Muslim countries are the House of War. It is the duty of every Muslim to wage jihad on the House of War, to fight, kill and subdue non-Muslims and convert that land into the House of Peace. Peace, according to Islam can only be attained by subduing non-Muslims and making them subordinate to Islamic rule. The idea is not so much to convert everyone to Islam, but to make Islam dominant. The non-Muslims can continue practicing their religion, but only as dhimmis, a term which means protected and is only applied to Christians and Jews. The Christians and the Jews (the people of the Book) will be protected, provided they pay the protection tax, known as the jizyah and feel themselves humiliated and subdued, as stated in the Qur’an.[2] If they fail to pay the jizyah, they can be exiled or put to death. This is how the Mafia operates. If you own a business, you could be harassed or even killed, unless you pay them a protection fee to be left alone. As for those unbelievers who are not protected, i.e. the pagans, the atheist, the animists, etc., they have either to convert or be killed.

7. The leader is not accountable to any authorities.

For Muslims, all actions of Muhammad constitute law. He cannot be held accountable for his actions. He was entitled to marry or have sex out of marriage with as many women as he wished. He could raid civilians, kill unarmed men, loot their properties and take their women and children as slaves and even rape them. He could assassinate his critics and torture them to make them reveal where they had hidden their treasures. He could have sex with children. He could lie and deceive his opponents. He could massacre his prisoners of war in cold-blood. None of that bothers his followers. At first they deny all of the above charges vehemently, accusing you of maligning their prophet, but once the evidence is presented, they suddenly change tactic and defend him, justifying his evil deeds, the very deeds they outrageously denied. For Muslims, Muhammad’s actions are not measured by what we humans know as right and wrong. Rather he is the standard, the measure of right and wrong. As the result, if a crime was committed by Muhammad, that crime becomes a holy deed and is emulated by his followers unquestioningly. Muslims are capable of committing the most atrocious acts of indecency and savagery with clear conscience, because it is sunnah (performed by Muhammad).

8. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).

In Islam, the ends always justify the means. For example, killing is bad, but if it is done to promote Islam, it is good. Suicide is prohibited, but suicide bombing that will cause the death of non-Muslims is a holy act. Stealing from fellow Muslims is prohibited and the thief’s hand will be chopped, but looting non-believers was practiced by Muhammad and so is considered acceptable by Muslims. Sexual intercourse out of marriage is taboo, but rape of the women of unbelievers is okay. The goal, which is the establishment of the reign of Allâh on Earth, is regarded to be so lofty that everything else becomes secondary. In the history of Islam, we read that people murdered their own fathers or waged war against them. Such actions are praised as the sign of faith and devotion of the believer. Lying in Islam is prohibited, except when it is said to deceive the non-Muslims and advance the interests of Islam.

9. The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.

Muslims’ thoughts tend to be overridden with guilt. If a Muslim does something contrary to what is permitted, other Muslims are required to remind him or her of the Sharia law and demand compliance. In most Islamic countries, particularly in Iran and Saudi Arabia , it is the state that makes sure the individuals follow the religious law. In March 2002 Saudi Arabia 's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress.[3] As a result fifteen girls were burned alive.

10. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.

Muslim converts are encouraged to cut their ties with family and friends if they are not Muslims. I have received countless heart-rending stories from non-Muslim parents whose children converted to Islam with whom they have lost touch completely. Occasionally, they may receive a call or a cold visit, but the visit may be so restricted, so bereft of any love from their children and their Muslim spouses that the outcome further saddens the already heartbroken parents. The purpose of these visits is usually to ask the parents to convert to Islam. They leave, as soon resistance is encountered.

11. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

Muslims’ main goal is to promote Islam. This practice of promoting Islam is called da’wa. It is the duty of every Muslim to bring new converts, starting with their own family and friends. Expanding Islam is the main obsession of every Muslim.

12. The group is preoccupied with making money.

Raising funds for jihad is one of the main objectives of all Muslims. Today this is done through what are known as Islamic “charities.” However, during the time of Muhammad, and throughout the course of Islam, raising money for jihad was done principally by looting. Islam’s main goal is to establish itself as the pre-eminent earthly power.

13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.

Muslims’ main preoccupation is Islam. They are required to regularly go to the mosque, attend obligatory prayers five times a day, listen to the sermons, etc. So enwrapped do they become in their thinking about how to perform their religious duties, what to wear, what to eat, how to perform their prayers, etc. that they are left with very little time for thinking of anything else. In fact, they are even told what to think and what not to think.

14. Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.

Muslims are taught to shun kafirs and are encouraged to socialize only with fellow Muslims. The Qur’an prohibits taking friends from among unbelievers (Q.3:28), calls them najis (filthy, impure) (Q.9:28), and orders harshness towards them (Q.9:123). According to Muhammad, the unbelievers are the vilest animals in the sight of God. (Q.8:55)

15. The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.

The thought of leaving Islam is something so unbearable for true Muslims they can’t even entertain it. Despite the fact that millions of Muslims have left Islam in recent years, hardcore Muslims remain adamant in believing nobody ever really leaves Islam, that such claims are all fabrications and part of the conspiracy to shake the faith of believers. Emails I have received from Muslims share one common theme. They all warn me of hellfire in the afterlife. Between the fear of hell and fear of reprisal, Muslims are trapped in a web of terror of their own making.

Islam was not created to teach humans spirituality, nor make them enlightened. The spiritual message in Islam is secondary or virtually nonexistent. Piety in Islam means emulating Muhammad, a man who was far from pious. Rituals like prayers and fasting are mere window dressings to lure the foolhardy inside, to give Islam the appearance of sacredness and spirituality.

This subject is explained in more detail in my book Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allâh's Prophet

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

What is the "real" Islam? Is it the Islam of the nice Muslim at work? Or is it the Islam of Osama bin Laden?

To get a logical answer, we must have a logical basis. What sources are available to answer the question? We can toss out the media and all of its answers since they generally quote apologist "experts". But is there an expert we can trust? Yes, there is. Mohammed.

The most fundamental statement that can be made about Islam is: there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet. This is the bedrock of Islam and points us directly to the only sure source of Islam-Allah and Mohammed. But where are Allah and Mohammed found? The Trilogy of Koran, Sira and Hadith. Allah is found in the Koran and Mohammed is found in the Sira (his biography) and the Hadith (his traditions of small stories and sayings). There is a special name for the sum of the Sira and the Hadith, the Sunna.

The Koran and Sunna are the only sure and certain basis of Islam. All of Islam is based upon the Trilogy.

The foundational texts of Islam --the Trilogy--suffer from being deliberately difficult. It is clear to anyone who reads these texts that every effort has been made to make the material obscure and difficult. There are two reasons for this obscurity. First, difficult texts make for a secure job for the priestly caste, the imams and scholars. If the text is clear in meaning, then no help is needed to understand it. The second reason is that the texts contain horrible and contradictory messages for the world buried under the obscurity.

The usual response to this difficulty is to skip the editing and offer up some verses from the Koran. But "verse" is a biased word in that it invokes a religious overtone. In almost every case, a verse is nothing more than a sentence. There is no other field of study in which individual sentences are given so much weight.

"Verse picking", to use a statistical term, is a very poor sampling method. What we want is the meaning, and it is impossible to learn the complete meaning from a sentence. What we need to concern ourselves with are ideas and concepts, not simply a sentence.

Let us be clear here that the very best way to obtain the complete meaning is to edit (edit does not mean change the meaning, but to order, rearrange and collect) the texts and then proceed from the edited text. The Koran is famously difficult. However, if the necessary editing is done, the Koran is a very straightforward document. The first editing steps are to put the Koran in order with respect to time. In this way when you turn the page, you advance in time, just as you would in a history book. This time line order has been known since the first days of Islam. The next step is to collect all of the variations of the same story. As an example, the story of Moses and the Pharaoh is told 39 times. If they are all collected under one category, then the Koran is easier to read and less boring.

The next step is to take the Sira and weave it into the Koran to give the Koran a context. For example, there is a verse that says that it was proper to burn the palm trees. For someone who reads this verse, a question arises: what palm trees are being talked about? The Koran gives no context. But in the day of its creation, everyone who heard the verse knew that the previous week, Mohammed had attacked some Jews who were date farmers and had destroyed their date palm trees in violation of Arabic war customs. When the story of Mohammed (from the Sira) is woven into the Koran, then the context of the attack on the Jews is clear.

A Koran that is in the proper time order, categorized, and includes Mohammed's life is a straightforward book that is easily understood. CSPI has published two Korans that have been edited this way-A Simple Koran and an Abridged Koran.

But we still have a problem. We need to be able to discuss the Koran with those who do not have access to edited Korans or who would not read them anyway. We need to be able make meaningful summary statements. Picking your favorite verse is not the way to make a summary statement.

We need a method of macro-analysis, not micro-analysis. We need to be able to talk about the big picture, the complete meaning of Islam. But there is a problem in trying to summarize Islam as it is filled with contradictory statements. So how do we deal with the contradictions while looking at the big picture?

The answer to these questions is to use a statistical measure of the texts. Don't let the word statistics scare you. The only statistics needed is counting how many items are in a category.

Take for example the idea of the importance of the Koran. The most commonly belief about Islam is that it is based upon the Koran and is a religion. Neither of these ideas is true.

How important is the Koran? It contains about 153,000 words. The Sira (by Ibn Ishaq) contains about 292,000 words, and the Hadith has 646,000 words (using the Bukhari text). So Allah is about 14% of the total of the Trilogy and the Sunna (Mohammed's words and deeds) is 86% of the total. These are only a quantitative measure, but still, it points out how important Mohammed is compared to Allah, based upon the amount of text.

This is born out further by noticing that the Koran does not contain enough information to practice even one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Only the Sunna (primarily the Hadith for religious practice) tells the Muslim how to worship. So the statistical measure shows that Islam is also Mohammedism.

Once the Koran is rearranged in the right time order, categorized and Mohammed's life is woven back into it, another fact leaps from the page. Very little of the Koran is devoted to how to be a Muslim, the religion of Islam. Instead, the majority of the Koran is about kafirs, non-Muslims. Kafirs are the worst of the creation. Allah hates kafirs and plots against them. Kafirs can be tortured, murdered, robbed, raped and enslaved. The Koran is fixated on kafirs, as was Mohammed.

To measure the Koranic fixation on kafirs, let us measure the fixation by counting the amount of text devoted to them. In Mecca an astounding 67% of the text is devoted to the kafir. In Medina 51% was about kafirs. The amount of text in the entire Koran devoted to kafirs is 61%.

As an aside, Islam excludes kafirs in every way from its religious practice. Since the kafir is outside of Islam, the term political Islam is used to describe the doctrine of Islam as it is applied to the "others", the kafirs. So 61% of the Koran is about political Islam, not religious Islam. (KS Lal gives the figure of 63% in Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India, Aditya Prakashan, 1999, N. Delhi, pg. 4).

The Sira shows the importance of Islam's political nature. Mohammed preached the religion of Islam for 13 years in Mecca and only gained 150 followers. He moved to Medina where he became a politician and warrior. After 10 years of violence he became ruler of all Arabia without a single enemy left standing. He was involved in an event of violence every 6 weeks for the last 9 years of his life. Statistical conclusion-Islam's success came from war and politics, not religion.

Another statistical conclusion: Islam is primarily a political doctrine, not a religion.

Simple statistics also reveal the true nature of the political/religious idea of jihad. When the word jihad is used, Muslims say that there are two kinds of jihad. There is the religious jihad, the greater jihad--the inner struggle against personal problems. The war jihad is the lesser jihad.

The Hadith of Bukhari gives all of the tactical details of jihad. A simple counting method shows that 3% of the hadiths are about the inner struggle, whereas, 97% of the hadiths are about jihad as war. So is jihad the inner struggle? Yes, 3%. Is jihad the war against kafirs? Yes, 97%.

This leads to a very important concept. Islam is based upon contradictory statements. How do we sort them out to get the complete meaning? We measure the amount of text devoted to each side of the dichotomy. That is what we did with the question of which jihad is the real jihad. It gives a complete statistical answer.

There is nothing new here. Only single value state ideas can be measured by one number. Multi-state ideas must be evaluated by statistics that measure every state of the variable. If an idea has different manifestations, then instead of arguing which is the right manifestation, just measure all of the manifestations.

There is an exact analogy to the measurement of the state of the electron in an atom. Quantum physics does not give a single answer about the energy and position, but gives us the statistical probabilities of each possible state. The same is true about Islam. We need to know its total state, not something about one category.

In conclusion, statistics is a superior way to gain complete knowledge of the texts of Islam. Statistics allows us to explore Islam in its totality. Remember the old story of the blind men feeling the elephant? One said the elephant was like a rope, another a tree, a wall and so forth. Was each man right? Were any of them wrong? No. But none of them were completely right. Statistical analysis cannot tell us the qualitative story but it allows us to remove the blinders of only looking at one category and forces us to look at the total picture.

Notice that this approach also effectively tells us how to evaluate the "experts" that get trotted out to buttress a favorite position. This is the iron rule of Islam-only Mohammed defines the truth of Islam. If what an expert says agrees with Mohammed, then the he is right, but he is redundant. If what the expert says contradicts Mohammed, then the expert is wrong. So experts are either redundant or wrong. Only Mohammed tells us the truth about Islam and he is never wrong or redundant. Skip the experts and move straight to Mohammed. The statistical approach does just that.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Traditionally, Western missionaries called the religion of Muhammad The Fortress of Islam. The name came out of the fact that there was no man-made religion in the world that resisted the Gospel of Christ as Islam did. To illustrate this fact there was a Western missionary man that lived for over twenty years in Iran preaching the good news to the Iranian Muslims. This story took place before the Islamic revolution in Iran. After living many years in Iran the missionary man succeeded in converting one young Iranian boy to Christianity and that boy was killed by his family. The missionary man took his belongings and returned to Europe. According to Dr. Ibtihal, the missionary man was not able to be effective among Muslims because he did not understand the hidden strongholds that kept the Muslims from understanding and accepting the Gospel of Jesus. Apart from this fact, there was nothing wrong with either the missionary man or the Gospel of Jesus.

In this chapter, I would like to summarize the great findings that Dr. Ibtihal's shrewd mind discovered that made her speeches and writings powerful tools in pulling down those strongholds. In her book, The Fortress of Islam, Dr. Ibtihal unearthed the hidden factors that withstood the preaching of the good news of the Gospel to Muslims. To begin with, she argued that Islam was an interconnected system of beliefs that if any one of its tenets was proved to be wrong its whole foundation would collapse. As a matter of fact, there were thousands of wrongs things in Islam that Muslim as well as non-Muslim scholars had already discovered and pointed out. Let us begin with Muslim scholars first. Whenever a Muslim scholar discovered something wrong with the Qur'an or hadith he would be condemned as an apostate and put to death. If he was lucky enough to escape the death penalty he would be called Zindeeq and either be compelled to flee out of his home country like the Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd or be compelled to recant his writings as the Egyptian great scholar Taha Hussien. There were numerous examples in the past of Muslim scholars who came up with new readings or interpretations to improve the status of women or social life but were condemned as Zindeeq and met with fatal consequences. Lay people faced more drastic actions than scholars and usually were put to death as apostates. Therefore, the law of apostasy was the first stronghold that Muhammad invented to lock his followers within his religious system.

The second factor was to do with the nature of the Qur'an. The Qur'an was believed to be the very words of God that the angel Gabriel dictated word by word to Muhammad. Muhammad's mind or memory was like a tape-recorder that recorded what it heard and reproduced it to his scribes and the scribes wrote them down as they heard them from him. Scholarly researches proved this doctrine to be incorrect and factious. There were ample examples of verses and Sorahs went missing and were never found and some got edited and changed. Nevertheless, any scholar today who doubted this doctrine of the completeness and preservation of the verses of Qur'an would be condemned as an apostate or Zindeeq and punished. The doctrine stated further that the words of the Qur'an were kept on a heavenly tablet placed at the Throne of God. This doctrine became a stronghold for the Gospel because of the various versions of the Bible. Every simple-minded Muslim could easily refute and reject the Gospel because of his strong belief that his Qur'an had never been changed or altered and nothing went missing from it. Muslim critics like Ahmed Deedat of South Africa equipped Muslims with ample examples of various versions of the Bible and that was for Muslims enough proof that Christians had changed and corrupted the Gospel of Jesus. The only way out of this problem would be to point out to the Muslim that his Qur'an was not complete and it was subjected to editing too.

The third and most powerful stronghold was the belief that the prophet Muhammad was greater than any previous prophets of God and after him there was no prophet. He was an ideal of spiritual, moral, and intellectual perfection. This belief might prove irrefutable sometime because of the upbringing of the Muslims. In Islam, every sin was pardonable except the sin of insulting the prophet Muhammad or doubting his claim to prophethood. An apostasy in Islam was considered treason and deserved capital punishment but an apostate still could be forgiven if he repented and returned to Islam after three days. However, if a Muslim sinned against the prophet Muhammad by doubting or insulting him, his sin was unpardonable even if he was found holding to the Curtains of the Holy Ka'abah in Makka. Therefore, the Muslim could think of anything and doubt everything about his faith but doubting or insulting the prophet Muhammad was unthinkable. His mind was fashioned in a way that it could not by itself doubt the truthfulness of his prophet. It is almost impossible to convince the Muslim that his prophet Muhammad had committed a single sin in his life. In order to make him doubt the truthfulness of Muhammad or to see how evil and sinful Muhammad was, the Muslim's mind requires outside assistance. Dr. Ibtihal was the first thinker to succeed in finding a way to create that doubt inside the Muslim's mind. For that reason her MLM movement gained many followers from Islam. Nevertheless, Dr. Ibtihal could not dream of doing that if she was living in a Muslim society or her homeland. Besides, Dr. Ibtihal benefited by Western protection she received by living in Canada and their technology. Many Muslims were living in the West. Those Muslims could hear the programs of the MLM. Moreover, the MLM movement was able to approach Muslims in the Middle East and the other Muslim countries through the chat rooms on the Internet.

The fourth stronghold, which began in our modern time and started to gain wide popularity in the Muslim world, was the false claim that the Qur'an is a great book of science. Traditionally, Muslim scholars accepted the fact that prophet Muhammad did not perform any miracle and his only miracle was the Qur'an. It was believed that Muhammad did not know how to read and write and hence an illiterate person could not possibly produce such a great book except God had revealed it to him. Therefore, the Qur'an was the only miracle that God supported Muhammad with. However, due to the vast advance of the Western countries and other non-Muslim Eastern countries such as Japan, China, and India, Muslim countries felt that they had been left far behind. This realization created an inferiority complex in the minds of some modern Muslim scholars and led some of them to come up with the doctrine of The Scientific Miracles of the Qur'an. The advocates of this modern theory claimed that every great scientific discovery or theory was already foretold or mentioned in the Qur'an. Hundreds of books and thousands of TV programs were produced to support this false doctrine. Those books and programs were meant to convince the ordinary Muslim that he had between his hands a book that surpassed all the greatness of the West and East.

However, there are a few Muslim scholars who rejected such a claim and wrote books to prove that the Qur'an is just a spiritual book and has nothing to do with science. Dr. Khalid Muntosir has written the most outstanding work in this field: The Illusion of Miraculous Sciences In the Qur'an. In this book, Dr. Muntosir shows that there is not a single scientific theory or discovery in the Qur'an and Muslim scholars such as Mustafa Mahmoud and Zaqlol al-Najjar are simply reading the modern scientific discoveries and theories in the book of the Qur'an.

The civilized, technological, and military defeats of the Muslim countries today created an inferiority complex among Muslims and led some Muslim scholars to come up with such shameful and false claims in order to hide those setbacks. Those new doctrines of scientific discoveries in the Qur'an were meant to assure Muslims that they are still the best nation that was ever produced to mankind.

The fifth stronghold was to do with the doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity. For an ordinary Muslim the doctrine sounded like a childish tale or blasphemy. Every Muslim no matter how ignorant he was about the teachings of the Gospel had some knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity. Muslim scholars as well as lay people were so proud about their doctrine of God that was called the Oneness of Allah. Islam was known as the religion of Oneness. According to that doctrine, God is one, does not beget a child, and has not being begotten as a child. This doctrine was designed by the Qur'an to refute and reject the Trinity. Regardless of the confusion that Muhammad fell into by involving Mary the mother of Jesus in the Trinity, the Islamic doctrine was manufactured in a way to ridicule the Christian doctrine of God. Muslims did not believe as some Western scholars tried to deduce that the Father slept with Mary and begot Jesus. The doctrine itself, whether Mary was involved in it or not, Muslims found to be childish and silly and the reason was the concept of God they had been taught – that God could not be a child or have a father. The true representation of the Trinity as the incarnation of the Son or Word of God and the two natures of Christ as perfect God and perfect man was absent in the teachings of Islam. Dr. Ibtihal considered it a waste of time to try to convince the Muslim about the Trinity as long as he considered the Qur'an the word of God and Muhammad the messenger of Allah. In order to demolish this stronghold the previous strongholds must be destroyed first. Then, and only then the Muslim's mind could be prepared to listen to the doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity.

The sixth stronghold was to do with the question of moral life. Muslims believed that they were more holy and moral than the West. Muslims identified the Western secular life with Christian life. Their preachers pointed to them in the mosques that in the West the man and woman could live together and cohabit without being married. In the West, women dressed up in shameful clothes that exposed all their private bodies. In the West, the father would go to jail if he beat his son or daughter. In the West, the husband would land in jail if he beat his wife if she disobeyed him or he caught her with her boyfriend in bed. In the West, the girl could bring her boyfriend inside her parents' house and sleep with him without being married to him. In the West, the parents could drink alcohol with their children. In the West, the man could marry a man and a woman is allowed to marry another woman. Homosexuality was not a sin and the law would not punish gays and lesbians. Therefore, Muslims considered the Western secular life as strong proof that they were following the true and holy religion and the Christians were following a corrupt and sinful religion.

Dr. Ibtihal believed that those were the main strongholds that made Islam a Fortress that withstood and resisted the Gospel of Jesus for over fourteen hundred years. In her book, The Fortress of Islam, she pointed out those strongholds and offered suggestions on how to destroy them.

Chapter 197 from my book, "Ibtihal and Muslims' Liberation Movement". Click on this link to view the book. http://www.publishamerica.net/product56703.htmll

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Prophet Muhammad forbade Freedom of Speech and ordered the Murder of those who dared to criticize him.

Asma Bint Marwan, of Banu Umayyah Ibn Zayd: Asma was the wife of Yazid Ibn Zayd Ibn Hisn al-Khatmi. She composed verses in which she criticized the Prophet. Muhammad sent Umar ibn Adi to go and kill her. Umar came to her in the night and entered her house. Her children were sleeping around her. There was one whom she was suckling. He searched her with his hand because he was blind, and separated the child from her. He thrust his sword in her chest till it pierced up to her back. Then he offered the morning prayers with the prophet at al-Medina. The apostle of Allah said to him: "Have you slain the daughter of Marwan?" He said: "Yes. Is there something more for me to do?" He [Muhammad] said: "No two goats will butt together about her. This was the word that was first heard from the apostle of Allah. The apostle of Allah called him 'Umar, "al-basir" (the seeing) (Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kobara, volume 2, p. 31).

Abu Afak, a man of great age (reputedly 120 years) was killed because he lampooned Mohammad. The deed was done by Salem bin 'Umar at the behest of the Prophet, who had asked, "Who will deal with this rascal for me?" The killing of such an old man moved a poetess, Asma bint Marwan, to compose disrespectful verses about the Prophet, and she too was assassinated.

Abdullah Ibn Sa'ad Ibn Abi Sarh: Muhammad had scribes write his revelations down for him. One scribe was Abdullah Ibn Sa'ad Ibn Abi Sarh. As Abi Sarh wrote these revelations down, he frequently made suggestions on improving their wording whenever he realized that the verses were poorly composed in wording and grammar. Muhammad often agreed and allowed the changes to be made. Eventually, Abdullah Ibn Sa'ad Ibn Abi Sarh left Islam, knowing it could not be from God if a mere scribe were allowed to change God's words. Later, after the conquest of Makah, Muhammad ordered Abi Sarh's death. "A person of al-Ansar had taken a vow to kill Ibn Abi Sarh [the already mentioned Abdullah] if he saw him. Uthman whose foster brother (Ibn Abi Sarh) came and interceded for him with the prophet. The Ansari was waiting for the signal of the prophet to kill him. Uthman interceded and he [Muhammad] let him go. The apostle of Allah said to the Ansari, "Why did you not fulfill your vow?" He said, "O apostle of Allah! I had my hand on the hilt of the sword waiting for your signal to kill him. The prophet said signaling would have been a breach of faith. It does not behave the prophet to make signal (Ibn Sa'ad in Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kobara p. 174).

Kinanah al-Rabi, who had the custody of the treasure of Banu Nadir, was brought to the apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came (Tabari says "was brought"), to the apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every morning early. When the apostle said to Kinana, "Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?" He said "Yes". The apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr Al-Awwam, "Torture him until you extract what he has." So he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad bin Maslama and he struck off his head (Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasulallah 'Biography of the Messenger of Allah' p. 37).

Abdullah Khatal of Babu Taym Ibn Ghalib. He had become a Muslim and the apostle sent him to collect the poor tax in company with one of the Ansar. He had with him a freed slave who served him. (He was Muslim). When they halted he ordered the latter to kill a goat for him and prepare some food, and went to sleep. When he woke up the man had done nothing, so he attacked and killed him and apostatized. He had two singing-girls Fartana and her friend who used to sing satirical songs about the apostle, so he ordered that they should be killed with him. Khatal was ordered to be killed not because he killed his male slave, a Muslim, but because he apostatized. Islamic law does not allow a Muslim man to be put to death for killing a slave, a Jew, a Christian, or any non-Muslim. A person came to the Prophet and said, "O apostle of Allah! Ibn Khatal is holding fast on the curtains of al-Ka'aba. The apostle of Allah said: "Kill him." The Prophet ordered the two slave girls to be killed for singing satirical songs about him.

The Harlots of Hadramut: Twenty-six noble women in Hadramut, a city in Yemen, celebrated the death of the Prophet Muhammad joyfully. Muslim historians called them 'The Harlots of Hadramut." The celebration is narrated by Ibn Habib al-Baghdadi in his book, "Kitab al-Muhabbar": "There were in Hadramut six women, of Kinda and Hadramut, who desired the death of the Prophet of God; they therefore [on hearing the news] dyed their hands with henna and played on the tambourines. To them came out the harlots of Hadramut and did likewise so that some twenty-odd women joined the six". However, Ibn Habib contradicts his statement that the women were 'Harlots' when he describes them as "Two were grandmothers, one a mother, and seven were young girls. Three of the twelve belonged to the ashraf ("the noble class") and four to the tribe of Kindah, a royal tribe which provided Yemen with its kings."

Two Muslim leaders wrote to Caliph Abu Bakr and reported the event. When the news reached the first caliph, Abu Bakr, he wrote back ordering that the hands of the women should be cut off. The caliph Abu Bakr said, ''The two righteous servants [of God] who remained steadfast in their religion when the greater part of their tribes apostatized...have written to me that before them there are certain women of the people of Yemen who have desired the death of the Prophet of God, and that these have been joined by singing-girls of Kinda and prostitutes of Hadramut, and they have dyed their hands and shown joy and played on the tambourine in defiance of God and in contempt of his rights and those of His Prophet. When my letter reaches you, go to them with your horses and men, and strike off their hands.''

Following the order of the Caliph, the twenty-six women were punished in a gruesome manner and that by having their hands chopped off.

A quotation from my book, "Irshad and the Abuse of Muslim Women". Click on this link. It is available online. http://www.publishamerica.net/product90819.html

Muhammad calls the Infidels "Brothers of Monkeys and Pigs" and orders their slaughter.

Narrated by ''A'isha: when the messenger of Allah became free from the allied forces, entered to his house wash himself for the prayer, Gabriel came to him, whom I have seen with his head covered by dust. He said to the prophet; oh Muhammad, have you laid down your weapons? The prophet said to him; we put down our weapons. Gabriel said to him; we have not yet laid down our weapons. Arise and march to Banu Qirizah.

The messenger of Allah commanded a muzzein to call on people, that any one hear and obey must not perform the 'Asir prayer except in Bani Qirizah (Al-Qimni 2004: 390-391, quoting from Ibn Kathir p. 119). Muhammad accused them that they broke their treaty with him and that by planning to open their garrison for the allied Makkan tribes to attack the Muslims at the Battle of the Ditch. However, as al-Qimni proved that the Jews were innocent from such an accusation. As a matter of fact, Muhammad is the one to be blamed for breaking the treaty. The Prophet said "if anyone hears and obeys should not perform his Asr prayer except in Bani Qurizah'" (Ibid: 391, quoting from al-Tabari al-Tarikh p. 591), Al-Bihaqi narrates that "the Prophet went out and passed by some people of Bani Qurizah and asked them, is there any one passed by you? They said, Dahia al-Kalib passed this way riding on a beautiful horse. The Prophet replied "that is not Dahia but the angel Gabriel, peace be upon him, sent to Bani Qurizah to shake them and put fear in their hearts" (Ibid, quoting from al-Bihaqi, al-Dalail p. 9). Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, and al-Bihaqi, narrated the dialogue between the prophet and the frightened Jews of Bani Qurizah jointly as follows:

Muhammad: Oh brothers of monkeys and pigs.

The trembling Jews replied: Oh Abu al-Qasim, you have not been a bad man!! (Ibid; 392, quoting from Ibn Kathir, al-Bedayia p. 120).

The prophet called out to them: Oh brothers of monkeys. Does Allah disappointed you and send on you his curse?

The Qurizah understood the message and replied in fear: Oh Abi al-Qasim, you have not been an ignorant man (Ibid, quoting from al-Bihaqi, al-Tarikh p. 582).

The Jews of Qurizah continued to plead with Muhammad 'and beg him to send to them one of their allies, a man by the name of Abi Libabah bin Abd al-Nuziar al-Awasi.

When Abi Libabah entered their garrison, the men rose, the women wept, and the children cried to him. When he saw them he had pity on them.

They said to him: oh Abi Libabah, do you think we should go out for the judgment of Muhammad?

He said, yes, and then he passed his finger across his neck, which means, the slaughter.

Then their leader, Ka'ab bin Asaad said to his people: Let us follow Muhammad and believe in him.

They replied: We will not leave the judgment of the Torah forever.

He said to them: Then let us kill our children and women and go out to Muhammad.

They said: Shall we kill these harmless children and women? What is the good of life after them? (Al-Qimni 2004: 393-394, quoting from al-Tabari p. 583).

Finally the men of Bani Qurizah decided to go out and meet Muhammad hoping that the other Medinian tribes would intercede with the Prophet and request him to send them with their women and children out of Yathrib as he did before with the other two Jewish tribes. As soon as the Jewish men emerged out of their garrison, the prophet ordered his men to bind them with ropes and march them in a long queue (Ibid: 394, quoting from al-Tabari, al-Tarikh p. 583). Then the prophet asked his men to dig many ditches inside the city (Ibid). After so many pleadings from the leaders of the Medinian tribes of al-Khaziriq and al-Awas, Muhammad agreed that Sa'ad bin Mu'aaz should decide the fate of the Jews (Ibid, quoting from al-Tabari p. 586).

Al-Tabari narrated that Sa'ad bin Mu'aaz was dying. During the siege of the city, an arrow hit his hand and caused a cut on one of his nerves. The prophet tried to heal him by heating a nail and burning the nerve. In doing that Muhammad thought the bleeding would stop. However, the burning nail worsened the cut and caused the nerve to swell. When the Prophet repeated the same treatment the nerve exploded (Ibid: 395). In his dying state Sa'ad was carried to the Prophet. When Muhammad saw him he ordered the Jews to stand to their Master. "When Sa'ad was put down by his carriers the prophet asked him to judge on them. He said, I judge on them that the men should be put to death, their wealth divided, and their women distributed as jawari among the Muslims. The prophet said to him, you have judged on them with the judgment of Allah that has been given to you from seven heavens" (Ibid: 395, quoting al-Tabari, al-Tarikh p. 586).

The horrifying slaughter was described by al-Tabari as follows:

They brought first the enemy of Allah, Huaya bin Akhatab, while his hands were bound to his neck by a rope. (Huaya was the father of Safiya bint Huaya whom the Prophet killed her husband and brother and took her as his wife). When Huaya saw the Messenger of Allah, he said to him, I swear by God, I have never blamed myself for your enmity. Then, Huaya turned to the people and said, oh people there is no fear from the judgment and the Book of God, it is an honor written by God to the children of Israel to die as martyrs. Then, he sat down and his neck was beheaded... Ali bin Talib and al-Zibiar continued to strike their necks... It is assumed that their blood reached the oilstones that are at the market (Ibid: 396, quoting from al-Tabari, al-Tarikh pp. 588-589).

The narrators of the sira differed in the number of the Jewish men who were killed on that fateful day. Some said six hundred, some seven hundred, some eight hundred, and some nine hundred (Ibid: 396). Al-Qimni states, "And we learn from our heritage a new thing happened in that slaughter. The slaughter was not restricted to men only, but included underage Jewish boys" (Ibid: 398 referring to al-Tabari p. 591). Then the victims were buried in those big holes or ditches that the Muslims dug.

According to narrators of the sira, Allah rewarded Sa'ad bin Mu'aaz for his decision and that by dying immediately after the slaughter. The angel Gabriel came to the Prophet in the middle of the night and told him that Sa'ad bin Mu'aaz died and the throne of Allah was shaken in his honor. Moreover, his funeral was attended by seventy thousand angels (Ibid: 397, quoting from al-Bihaqi pp. 28-29).

The number of the booty was counted by Ibn Sa'ad as one thousand five hundred swords, three hundred armors, one thousand spears, one thousand and five hundred shields, and many camels and cows. Regarding the women, their number was more than the number of the Muslim men. Therefore, when every Muslim man got his share from the Jewish women, the remaining were sold as slaves to the men of Nagid. Muhammad took Rayhana bint Umaro. Ibn Kathir narrates that, "The prophet told Rayhana that he would release her from slavery and marry her. However, Rayhana chose to remain in slavery, which she believed more bearable to her... She refused to accept Islam and decided to remain a Jew and slave all her life" (Ibid: 401, quoting Ibn Kathir, al-Bedaya, p. 128 and al-Tabari, al-Tarikh, p. 592).

According to Sayyid al-Qimni, "The Islamic army attacked the tribes in the Arabian Peninsula and subjected them by force to its new State, after terrorizing them so that they had to join the Medinian alliance" (al-Qimni 1996: 235). For Al-Qimni, terrorism is one of the fundamentals of Islam (Ibid).

A quote from my book, "Ibtihal and Muslims' Liberation Movement". Click on this link to view the book. http://www.publishamerica.net/product56703.html

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Documenting my love struck with Israel, Gen 12:3, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

The establishment of Israel state in 1948 was foretold in Rev 12:6, "The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.", as 688 was the year of the building of the Dome of the Rock.

Israel is now fully surrounded by Obama's Muslim Brotherhood radicalizations of the Middle East. It is time for you to realise Islam is the world menace. Love the Muslims, get them out and protect them from Islam. We are now living at the End of Time waiting for the Last Trumpet.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

If religion is defined as an institutionalized system with a belief in a supreme being and with values that govern the conduct of individuals, then Christianity, Judaism, Islam and others would be religions. So would the Boy Scouts.

OK, take out the Boy Scouts. The reason it isn’t a religion is because the main purpose of the Boy Scouts is to turn youngsters into responsible, participating citizens and leaders who are guided by the Scout Oath and Law. They advocate honoring and following God, but through the individual’s own religious beliefs as instructed by his parents and religious teachers.

I would argue that Islam is as much of a religion as the Boy Scouts (except without the Trustworthy, Cheerful, Kind, and Courteous parts), and maybe even less so. Here are just a few reasons why:

1-Religions have value systems and moral codes (e.g., the Ten Commandments) that have a civilizing effect on society and call on mankind to strive for betterment.

Islam appears to have the opposite effect on its followers. Their holy book inspires destruction, maiming and killing. Since 9/11, there have been more than 15,000 deadly terrorist attacks around the globe - all in the name of Islam.

Although there are glaring lapses (e.g., the Catholic Church’s failure to address the issue of pedophile priest), religions have leaders that publicly condemn and root out aberrant behavior.

With Islam, there have been centuries of violent, sickening acts (e.g., beheadings, honor killings, stonings) against perceived enemies and innocents, yet those in leadership positions never speak out with the same fervor as the radical faithful who are committing the atrocities. (Could it be that those in power secretly want the fanatics to succeed?)

2-Religions are separate and apart from governments.Isam seeks the dual role of governing the state and administering Allah’s laws. It was that way when Mohammad ruled, has continued through the centuries, and can be found today in places like Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In Muslim states, religious texts are law. The judicial system under Sharia, therefore, is essentially comprised of religious courts with local Mosque officials serving as judges.

Individuals in Muslim countries become nothing more than puppets controlled by the religious leaders who command them to serve the will of Allah. What they see, hear, and do is tightly controlled. Newspapers are censured, books are banned and burned, and the educational system has an emphasis on Islamic teaching and is almost primarily restricted to men.

3-Religions do not advocate dominating other religions.

Every religion would like to see its following grow, but that isn’t the focus of the faith. Judaism talks about serving God. Christianity preaches that every person can achieve salvation. Buddhism’s focus is nirvana -- deliverance of the mind. Hindu’s three life affirming goals are: Dharma (virtue), Artha (success), and Kama (pleasure). These major religions have learned throughout the centuries how to deliver their message while living in peace with each other.

Islam, on the other hand, seeks to be the dominant religion and political power in every nation where it has gained a foothold. It is written, "Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions."

4-Religions that are secure in their doctrine welcome theological discourse and public scrutiny.

Muslims riot over cartoons of Mohammad and issue fatwâs to kill authors of books critical of the Prophet. While demanding that others respect their views, they are intolerant of the beliefs, customs, and practices of others. Try announcing to a Saudi Arabian customs official that you would like to take your bible into the country – see what happens.

5-Religions consider human life precious.

Here is the Quran’s advice on how to treat non-believers:

4:89 They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend or helper from among them.

Let’s stop with the charade and have the courage to reveal the true identity of Islam and call it what it is – a political movement that uses a theological basis as a means to acquire power and subjugate its citizens.

Continue to treat Islam as a religion and it will spread its doctrine across the globe unchallenged, and leave in its wake governments more intent on keeping citizens ignorant and progress to a minimum.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Imagine one evening you hear a knock on the door. When you open it, a group of armed men with police uniforms enter your house, beat you and handcuff you. Your wife and children are terrorized, but they are told to shut up or they too will be beaten.

Thoughts rush to your mind. You try to figure out what did you do to deserve this treatment. You have been an upright citizen all your life. In fact you have been a human rights activist and have received an award for your services. You have been a respected speaker. Could all this be a mistake?

You ask the officers about the charges. Their response sends chill down your spine. You are being accused of blasphemy. You are a non-Muslim living in a Muslim majority country and all it takes for you to lose your freedom, job, friends, social standing and even life is for someone to report to authorities that you have spoken opprobriously of Muhammad and hence have injured the religious sensitivity of Muslims.

This is the nightmare that minorities in Islamic countries face. The charge does not have to be true. It could be that someone owes you money and he wants to get rid of you. It could be that someone offered to buy your land, which you refused to sell at the price he was offering. Or maybe someone does not like you because you are a human rights activist fighting for the rights of the oppressed minorities.

Abuses such as this happen on daily basis in Pakistan. More than two years ago, it was the turn of Hector Aleem. Aleem was taken to custody. He was brutally beaten by the police and thrown in a prison cell.

In Pakistan, if you are accused of blasphemy you are guilty until proven otherwise. But to prove your innocence it takes years and thousands of dollars. The lawyers' fee is exorbitant, whereas the wages in Pakistan are extremely low.

Aleem's family has spent all its wealth in legal fees to prove the innocence of their father. Hector's wife earns the meager salary of a nurse. The two elder daughters work but there are five mouths to feed and the legal fee is eating up everything they earn.

More than a year ago, when the case went to the court for the first time, the prosecutor, himself a mullah, did not find enough evidence against Aleem to support his charges. However, he warned the judge that should he release Aleem, the angry mob huddled inside and outside the court may kill him and the judge also may not fare better. This is exactly what happened on July 19 of this year to two Christian brothers, who were gunned down by Muslim militants when they left the court under police custody after a trial hearing in Faisalabad city, Punjab province.

So, Aleem was sent back to jail to face more beating in the hands of his jail keepers. They even told him that they would kill him before setting him free. Aleem's family appealed the court's ruling and a second hearing was arranged. This is where we are at now. The new lawyer is confident, but of course he has to be paid first and his fees are beyond what this impoverished family can afford.

A kind man from Australia has offered to sponsor Hector Aleem and provide him with a working visa. But first Aleem must be released. More than $7000 dollars are needed just for the legal fees. This is a large sum for a nurse with four children. Mehwish, Aleem's older daughter, has set up a paypal account for those who want to help. Here is the account: http://tinyurl.com/hectoraleem. Please click on it and pay generously. This is Mehwish's email address: Mehwishaleem@gmail.com.

The blasphemy law is an affront to human rights. It is devised to legally persecute the minorities. Even if you are not guilty you'll be annihilated before you prove your innocence. The objective of the blasphemy law is to get rid of the minorities by incriminating them one by one.

Isn't it time for the governments of the free world to demand Pakistan to put an end to legalized religious persecution? Pakistan is recipient of large sums of aids from the western countries and particularly from USA. But its only contributions are to persecute the minorities and to produce terrorists.

Please contact your member of parliament, your congressman and the senators in your country and ask them to demand the release of Hector Aleem and to raise the issue of human rights abuses in Pakistan. It is time for the European Parliament, the US congress and the Parliaments in Canada and Australia to condemn the blasphemy law and demand its immediate repeal.

It is a shame that the same governments that swiftly pass laws to protect Muslims against criticism of Islam, find no courage to stand up for the human rights of minorities in Islamic countries. Aren't human rights more important than beliefs? Where is the outcry of the parliamentarians, presidents and prime ministers of the free world vis-à-vis these human rights abuses?

Please spread the world about the plight of Hector Aleem. Here is his support page on Facebook.

Also, please contact the Pakistani embassy in your country as well as the following Pakistani authorities, by phone or by email and express your concern about the dismal human rights in that country. Demand the immediate release of Hector Aleem and the repeal of the blasphemy law. God does not need humans to defend him. The blasphemy law is legalization of persecution. It has no place in any civilized society and no civilized country should tolerate it anywhere. Your government has no right to send your tax money to a pariah country like Pakistan that has a law to persecute minorities.

Friday, August 6, 2010

According to his biography, the prophet Muhammad was demon-possessed, suicidal, rapist, child-abuser, adulterer, etc.

Chapter Eighty-Eight

“The False Prophet”

During her speeches’ tour Irshad realized that most of her audience consisted of non-Muslims. Such realization made her to come up with a new proposal that meant to attract Muslims to her speeches. In order to put her proposal in action Irshad wrote her first book which she entitled “The False Prophet.” Her long experience of being a Muslim wife taught her that all Muslim women were living as slaves to their husbands, fathers, and brothers and needed to be emancipated from such bondage. Moreover, Irshad believed that majority of Muslims were living under mental slavery and in order to liberate them she tried in her book to prove that the Qur’an was not a revelation from God and Muhammad was a False Prophet. Using her bitter experience Irshad was able to elaborate on the abuses that Muslim women were going through in Muslim countries. She argued that Muslim women who were living in the West were able to escape the abuses because they were protected by the secular laws of the countries they were dwelling in.

Irshad’s book was considered by Muslims to be an attack on Islam. What she wrote in her book regarding the status of women and terrorism in Islam she already mentioned in her speeches. However, what annoyed Muslims were the evidences and proofs that she supplied while she was arguing that the Qur’an was not a revelation from God and Muhammad was a false prophet. According to her, Muhammad did not meet the criteria of a prophet. The prophet was the one who either preformed a miracle by the help of God or utter a prophecy about the future and it came to pass. For example, Moses worked a miracle by dividing the Red Sea and Jesus raised the dead, but Muhammad did not perform one single miracle. Muslim historians agreed that Muhammad did not perform a miracle but claimed that his only miracle was the Qur’an. However, when this claim was subjected to test by non-Muslim scholars they found that the Qur’an was an ordinary book and full of contradictions, confusions, historical errors, grammatical mistakes, and hence lacking any claim to mastery work.The second criterion for the prophet was to prophesize about the future. When the children of Israel asked Moses as how they should know the person was a prophet from God he replied by saying whatever he had said if it did not come to pass then he was not a prophet. Muhammad did not utter a single prophecy in his time. Muslim scholars considered the stories of the prophets of the Bible that mentioned in the Qur’an as proofs that Muhammad was a prophet from God. However, any one could refute such a claim by saying that he got them from the Jews who were living in Medina at his time. Irshad showed in her book that Muhammad did not even get those stories right. He mixed the true stories as mentioned in the Bible with the legends and fables that were added later on in the Jewish Talmud. This proved that Muhammad did not read the Bible but heard those stories from the Jews and Christians who were living in the Arabian Peninsula at his time. To put it more clearly he just heard those stories from simple Jews who could not distinguish between the true story as recorded in the Old Testament and the fables and legends that were added to it by Jewish commentators.

Muslim scholars also considered the mentioning of the rewards in heaven and punishments in hell as prophecies revealed to Muhammad by God. Scholarly researches showed that Muhammad got those stories of the virgins in paradise from some ancient religions of Arabia and Persia. However, even if he did invent them himself still they did not qualify him as a prophet because any one with fancy imagination could come up with such stories. Therefore, by both criteria – performing miracles or prophesying about the future – Muhammad could not be called prophet. From this Irshad concluded that Muhammad was a false prophet.

Irshad also showed that Muhammad’s life did not qualify him to be a prophet from God. In order to prove her point she referred to his scandalous marriages with four of his women and his behavior as a prophet.

Muhammad and His Child-Bride:A’isha Bint Abu Bakr (child-bride) was Muhammad's third wife. `A’isha herself narrated, "The Messenger of God married me in Shawwal in the tenth year after of his prophet-hood, three years before the Migration as I was six years old. I was nine years old when he consummated the marriage with me.” Ibn Hisham holds that "Muhammad married her when she was seven years old and consummated the marriage with her when they were in Medina when she was nine years old. The Messenger of God did not marry any other virgin but her.” `A´isha narrated, "The Messenger of God married me when I was still playing with the girls. I did not know that the Messenger of God married me until my mother took me and locked me up in the house. Then I realized that I was married.” A’isha also said, "I was playing with the girls during the lifetime of the Messenger of God. The Messenger of God came to me when I was playing with the girls, and asked me, 'What is this, `A’isha?' I said, 'The horses of Solomon.' He laughed."

"I would be playing with my dolls," narrated A’isha, "with the girls who were my friends, and the Prophet would come in and they would slip out of the house and he would go out after them and bring them back, for he was pleased for my sake to have them there." Sometimes he would say "Stay where you are" before they had time to leave, and would also join in our games.”

These narrations tell us that the prophet Muhammad married A’isha when she was a child of nine years old. Therefore, no Muslim scholar would be able to deny this obvious fact. Based on the example of the prophet Muhammad with A’isha the minimum age for marriage in the Shari’a was not fixed to a specific age. It was left to the guardian of the girl to decide which age to give his daughter in marriage. In Surah al-Talaq, verse four the Qur’an allows the father of the girl to give her in marriage before she has her monthly period.

The Prophet married Malika bint Ka`b who was known for her resplendent, magnificent beauty. `A´isha entered to her and said, "Are you not ashamed of marrying the killer of your father?" So Malika took refuge with God from the Prophet, and he divorced her" (Tabaqat Ibn Sa'ad, 8:141; Usd al-ghaba, 5:525).

A’isha noticed that whenever the prophet Muhammad wanted to sleep with a woman he claimed that Allah revealed to him and justified his action. In that regard A’isha remarked, "It seems to me that your Lord hastens to satisfy your love" (Sahih Muslim. vol. 2, p.748-749). It was not clear on what occasion A’isha made such a doubting remark. Some sources referred it to the incident when the prophet was caught by his wife Hafsa in the very act of having sex with his maidservant Maria the Coptic and other sources related it to his scandalous marriage with his daughter-in-law, Zinab bint Jahsh.”

Muhammad and the Question of Rape:Safiya Bint Huaya was the daughter of Huaya, one of the Jewish leaders. When Muhammad invaded Khyber, the Jewish city, he killed Safiya's husband, brother, and uncle. Her husband was Canana Bin al-Rabi'a, whom the prophet tortured to death and extracted from him the hiding place of his treasure. In the beginning, Safiya was taken as slave-captive by Dhaia al-Kaleb. When the news reached the prophet's ears that Safiya was extremely beautiful and the daughter of a Jewish leader, he took her from Dhaia.

On the same day, he killed her husband, brother, and uncle the prophet forced her to sleep with him. One could imagine how Safiya felt toward the man who killed her close relatives and forced her to sleep with him on bed on the same day. No doubt about it that Safiya was crying when the prophet Muhammad raped her on the same night he killed her husband and brother and all her people. Safiya is reported to have said, "I have never hated any man more than the prophet, because he killed my husband, father, and all my people."

The prophet needed someone handy that day to protect him because Safiya might kill him for revenge on the first night he forced her on bed. The Sira Al-Halabia of the prophet tells us that when the messenger of Allah emerged out of the tent in the morning, “there was a sword with Abu Ayyub. Abu Ayyub said, "O Messenger of Allah, she was a newly married woman, and you killed her father, brother, and husband, so I did not feel secure about you with her" (The story of Safiya was mentioned in detail in al-Sira al-Halabia, Ibn Hisham, and Tabaqat Ibn Sa'ad).

The prophet broke the law of the Qur’an, which said the woman who was divorced or lost her husband should remain without marriage for three months and ten days before another man sleeps with her. “Such of your women as have passed the age of monthly courses, for them the prescribed period, if ye have any doubts, is three months, and for those who have no courses (it is the same): for those who carry (life within their wombs), their period is until they deliver their burdens: and for those who fear Allah, He will make their path easy” (Qur’an Al-Talaq 65: 4). The prophet Muhammad should have waited for three months and ten days before he slept with Safiya in order to know whether she was pregnant from her late husband.

Abu Dawud 2150—Abu Sa’id al-Khudri said: The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) sent a military expedition to Awtas on the occasion of the battle of Hunain. They met their enemy and fought with them. They defeated them and took them captives. Some of the Companions of the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) were reluctant to have intercourse with the female captives in the presence of their husbands who were unbelievers. So Allah, the Exalted, sent down the Qur’anic verse: “And all married women (are forbidden) unto you save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.”

Sunan Abu Dawud 2167—Muhairiz said: I entered the mosque and saw Abu Sa’id al-Khudri. I sat with him and asked about withdrawing the penis (while having intercourse). Abu Sa’id said: We went out with the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to Banu al-Mustaliq, and took some Arab women captive, and we desired the women, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, and we wanted ransom; so we intended to withdraw the penis (while having intercourse with the slave-women). But we asked ourselves: Can we draw the penis when the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) is among us before asking him about it? So we asked him about it. He said: It does not matter if you do not.

Muhammad and the Question of Adultery:Maria the Coptic Christian was not counted by Muslim scholars as one of the wives of the prophet or "Mothers of the faithful" because she remained a Christian and slave. She bore him a son, Ibrahim, who died in infancy. The prophet's desire for Maria was described in a dramatic way by the books of the Sira (Biography).

Hafsa, one of the prophet's wives, caught him having sexual intercourse with Maria in her room. "O Prophet of God, in my house, on my bed, and in my night!' shouted Hafsa angrily. Afraid of the anger of his other wives, and especially of his most beloved A’isha, the prophet promised Hafsa that he would never touch Maria again if she would keep the matter secret. Nevertheless, she spoke out, and the matter reached the ears of A’isha.

When his beloved A’isha confronted him he received a revelation from heaven which justified and legalized his action with Maria.“O Prophet! Why holdest thou to be forbidden that which Allah has made lawful to thee? Thou seekest to please thy consorts but Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful” (Surah Al-Taharim 66: 1). When A’isha heard the above justification she said to him, “Why should I see your God in a haste to satisfy your love?”

Muhammad Coveted and Slept with His Daughter-in-law:Zinab Bint Jahash: The Moroccan professor, Fatima Mernessi described the marriage of Zinab Bint Jahash with the prophet Muhammad as a scandalous marriage because Zinab was the wife of the prophet's adopted son, Zayd and therefore, in the eyes of the Arabs, as good as his own daughter-in-law. Muhammad went to her house when her husband was away, saw her in a state of semi-nudeness, and was aroused. According to the Sira, God sent a wind, which lifted up the curtain of the tent and Muhammad saw Zinab lying on her bed half-naked. Zinab was described by the Sira as fair, beautiful, and had sensual body.

When Zayd heard about it, he offered to divorce her, but Muhammad, fearing a public scandal, told him to keep his wife for himself. At this point Allah spoke and decided the matter (Qur’an Surah al-Ahzab 33: 36-40). However, Allah sent a revelation from heaven in which he blamed Muhammad for telling Zayd, “Retain thou in wedlock thy wife,” and for hiding in his heart “that which God was about to make manifest.” Allah told Muhammad: “Thou feared the people, but it is more fitting that thou should fear God,” and he revealed his plan, present and future, to Muhammad thus: “We joined her in marriage to thee: in order that (in future) there may be no difficulty to the Believers in (the matter of) marriage with the wives of their adopted sons, when the latter have dissolved with the necessary (formality) (their marriage) with them. And Allah's command must be fulfilled” (Qur’an Surah al-Ahzab 33: 36-40).

The commentator Al-Quorobti commenting on those verses said that based on this marriage it became a law that if Muhammad sees any woman and desires her it becomes compulsory for her husband to divorce her at once and she becomes the wife of the prophet! Moreover, the Qur’an mentioned that if any woman wants to offer herself to the prophet Muhammad and if he wants to have sex with her, he alone among the believers is allowed to do so. Muhammad also was exempted from the restriction of the Qur’an that a man should marry only four women at a time. In other words, the prophet alone was allowed to have any number of wives and that is why he married thirteen women and slept with them at the same time and two female slaves Maria and Rayhana with whom he used to have sex without marriage.

Muhammad made Zayd himself to go to his wife with his marriage proposal. “Allah’s Messenger said to Zayd to make a mention to her about him.”Anas narrated: "When the legal period of Zinab Bint Jahsh was finished, the Messenger of God said to Zayd Ibn Haritha, 'I have none that I can trust, other than myself, but you. Go to Zinab and propose to her for me.' So Zayd went off and came to her while she was leavening dough. Zayd said, 'When I saw her, she became greater in heart, and I could not look at her since I knew that the Messenger of God mentioned her. So I turned my back on her and said, "O Zinab, rejoice; the Messenger of God has mentioned you." She said, 'I shall do nothing until I ask the advice of my Lord.' She rose up and went to pray. Then the verse was revealed: 'Once Zayd has accomplished his purpose with her, We married her off to you.' Then the Messenger of God came and entered without permission."

Muhammad Made Several Attempts to Commit Suicide:The prophet Muhammad was frightened by the first vision that he saw in Cave Hirah. He ran to his first wife Khadija and asked her to cover him with clothes. He thought what appeared to him in the cave was a satanic creature. Khadija somehow assured him that what he saw was an angel and not a demon. She took him to her cousin, Waraqa who confirmed the words of Khadija. That was the first time when Muhammad believed that God sent his angel Gabriel to tell him that he was chosen to be the messenger of Allah.

“But after a few days Waraqa died and the Divine Inspiration also paused for a while and the prophet became so sad as we have heard that he intended several times to throw himself from the tops of high mountains and every time he went up to the top of a mountain in order to throw himself down, Gabriel would appear before him and say, "O Muhammad! You are indeed Allah's Apostle in truth" whereupon his heart would become quiet and he would calm down and would return home. And whenever the period of the coming of the inspiration used to become long, he would do as before, but when he used to reach the top of a mountain, Gabriel would appear before him and say to him what he had said before” (Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 9, hadith no. 111).

Al-Tabari narrated the suicidal attempts of the prophet differently,“The prophet Muhammad said, now none of God's creatures was more hateful to me than an (ecstatic) poet or a man possessed: I could not even look at them. I thought, Woe is me poet or possessed - Never shall Quraysh say this of me! I will go to the top of the mountain and throw myself down that I may kill myself and gain rest. So, I went forth to do so and then when I was midway on the mountain, I heard a voice from heaven saying "O Muhammad! thou are the apostle of God and I am Gabriel" (Al-Tabari, vol. 9, p. 167).

There is no prophet in the Bible that tried to commit suicide. I don’t believe God would put his prophet in such a desperate and helpless situation. God spoke through all his prophets in the old and new testaments but none of them felt the way Muhammad felt. It is hard to believe that the angel of God would force his message on the prophet of God the way Gabriel did with Muhammad.

A’isha narrated, “The angel came to him and asked him to read. The prophet replied, "I do not know how to read." (The Prophet added), "The angel caught me (forcefully) and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it anymore. He then released me and again asked me to read, and I replied, "I do not know how to read," whereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second time till I could not bear it anymore. He then released me and asked me again to read, but again I replied, "I do not know how to read (or, what shall I read?)." Thereupon he caught me for the third time and pressed me and then released me and said, "Read: In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all that exists). Has created man from a clot. Read and Your Lord is Most Generous...up to... that which he knew not" (Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 9, Book 87, hadith no. 111).

Can anyone believe that the same Gabriel that appeared to Mary in the New Testament was the same Gabriel that appeared to Muhammad in the Cave of Hirah? The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and gave her the message of God. He did not force the message on her, but Gabriel of Muhammad forced him to accept his message until the latter felt he was going to kill him.

26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’t name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37For nothing is impossible with God."38 "I am the Lord’s servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her (Luke 1: 26-38).

Prophet Muhammad became suicidal for a period of three years after Gabriel appeared to him. For such a long period of time, he was not sure whether he was a soothsayer, possessed by demons, or messenger of God. During this period, many times he said to himself, “I will go to the top of the mountain and throw myself down that I may kill myself and gain rest” (Al-Tabari, quoting from Sirat Rasulallah by Ibn Ishaq). Muhammad also suspected that he became mad, "O Khadija, I see light and hear sounds and I fear I am mad" (al-Tabaqat al-Kobra by Ibn Sa’ad).

A’siha continued to narrate, “Then Allah's Apostle returned with the Inspiration, his neck muscles twitching with terror till he entered upon Khadija and said, "Cover me! Cover me!" They covered him till his fear was over and then he said, "O Khadija, what is wrong with me?" Then he told her everything that had happened and said, 'I fear that something may happen to me" (Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 9, book 87, hadith no. 111).

Muhammad Controlled by the Power of Black Magic:No prophet of God in the Bible had been controlled by the power of magic. However, a Jewish man cast spells on the prophet Muhammad and controlled him for over six months.“According to A’isha, “magic was worked on Allah's Apostle so that he used to think that he had sexual relations with his wives while he actually had not. Then one day he said, "Oh A’isha do you know that Allah has instructed me concerning the matter I asked Him about? Two men came to me and one of them sat near my head and the other sat near my feet. The one near my head asked the other, "What is wrong with this man?" The latter replied the man is under the effect of magic. The first one asked, "Who has worked magic on him?" The other replied, "Labid Ibn Al-A'sam, a man from Bani Zuraiq who was an ally of the Jews and was a hypocrite" (Al-Bukhari, vol. 7, hadith no. 660).The kind of magic that was worked on Muhammad was described by one of his followers as the worst one.

‘Urwa related that A’isha said, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was bewitched so that he would imagine that he had had intercourse with his wives when he had not". (Sufyan said, "This is the worst type of magic when it does that)” (Sahih al-Bukhari, book of medicine, hadith no. 79).

For six months, the prophet of Islam remained in a state of not knowing what he was doing and fell very sick and lost the hair of his head due to that powerful magic.

“The Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, had a Jewish servant boy. The Jews approached him and kept after him until he gave them some fallen hair from the Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, as well as a few teeth from his comb. The Jews used these to cast a spell of black magic on him. The person who was behind this was the Jew Labid ibn al-A‘sam. He then put the hair in a well belonging to Banu Zurayq called Dharwan. The Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, fell ill for a period of six month, during which the hair of his head fell off; he imagined that he slept with his wives when he did not, and was withering away without knowing the reason” (Asbab Nuzul Surah al-Falaq 113: 1-5 by ‘Ali Ibn Ahmad al-Wahidi).

Muhammad Died of Poison:Muhammad also had been poisoned by a Jewish girl called Zinab Bint al-Harith. Zainab poisoned Muhammad as a revenge of what he did to her people.“When the apostle of Allah conquered Khyber and he had peace of mind, Zinab bint al-Harith, inquired, "Which part of the goat is liked by Muhammad?" They said, "The foreleg." Then she slaughtered one from her goats and roasted it (the meat). Then she wanted a poison that could not fail. The apostle of Allah took the foreleg, a piece of which he put into his mouth. Bishr took another bone and put it into his mouth. When the apostle of Allah ate one morsel of it Bishr ate his and other people also ate from it. Then the apostle of Allah said, "Hold back your hands! because this foreleg; ...informed me that it is poisoned. Thereupon Bishr said, "By Him who has made you great! I discovered it from the morsel I took. Nothing prevented me from emitting it out, but the idea that I did not like to make your food unreleasing. When you had eaten what was in your mouth I did not like to save my life after yours, and I also thought you would not have eaten it if there was something wrong. Bishr did not rise from his seat but his color changed to that of "taylsan" (a green cloth). The apostle of Allah sent for Zinab and said to her, "What induced you to do what you have done?" She replied, "You have done to my people what you have done. You have killed my father, my uncle, and my husband, so I said to myself, "If you are a prophet, the foreleg will inform you; and others have said, "If you are a king we will get rid of you. The apostle of Allah lived after this three years till in consequence of his pain he passed away. During his illness he used to say, "I did not cease to find the effect of the (poisoned) morsel, I took at Khyber and I suffered several times (from its effect) but now I feel the hour has come of the cutting of my jugular vein" (Altabaqat al-Kobra, Ibn Sa'ad pp. 251- 252).

It is clear that the Jewish girl, Zinab bint al-Harith wanted to kill Muhammad as a revenge for killing her father, uncle, and husband. However, Muslim historians and biographers tried to show that the food informed Muhammad that it was poisoned. Moreover, they made Zinab to say, "If you are a prophet, the foreleg will inform you; and others have said, "If you are a king we will get rid of you. However, the incident of poisoning Muhammad and its consequences did not support any claim to supernatural intervention. First, of all Muhammad tasted the morsel, the poison interred his body, and eventually caused his death, “The apostle of Allah lived after this three years till in consequence of his pain he passed away.” Secondly, his companion Bishr also knew the food was poisoned from its taste. Thirdly, Bishr died at the spot. Fourth, if the prophet knew that the food was poisoned why didn’t he stop his companion Bishr from eating it and save his life?